Referral!

It's been less than three weeks since the national office received our completed dossier. But on Sunday we opened an email from Pam announcing our referral of a baby boy. Wow!

He was born on November 5. He weighs 6 pounds (American babies are enormous compared to some other countries) and is 19.3 inches long. He's already in foster care and under the supervision of a pediatrician.

A caution: we can't be sure yet that this baby is our Ronald. International adoption is not predictable. We're trying to wait until the DNA test, a few months from now, to give our hearts to this baby. (DNA test ensures that the woman making an adoption plan for the child is indeed his birthmother; she will also reaffirm her decision to make that plan at the time of the test.) Until then, we'll call him "Ronald" but we mean "Ronald?". But he's cute. More pictures are posted on our picture-sharing website--if you don't have the address, email us and we'll send it to you.

Up next: tomorrow we bring his pictures and medical report to the International Adoption program at Children's Hospital for review by their doctor. As long as there are no surprises, we plan to accept the referral. More paperwork, notarization, and state seals. After that our documents will be translated and sent to Guatemala. It takes a while to move into the system, so we probably won't officially enter Family Court, the next big step, for about three months.